George Robert FitzGerald

George Robert Fitzgerald, aka Fighting Fitzgerald (c.1748 – 12 June 1786) was a celebrated Irish eccentric, duellist and landowner, who was hanged for conspiracy to murder in 1786. Biography FitzGerald came from Turlough, near Castlebar, County Mayo, eldest son of the landowner and magistrate George FitzGerald and Lady Mary Hervey, and grandson of Thomas FitzGerald of Turlough. He was of an upper-class family, being the nephew on his mother's side of Frederick Augustus Hervey, 4th Earl of Bristol and Bishop of Derry, while his father claimed kinship with the extinct family of the Earl of Desmond. His parents, whose marriage was unhappy, separated a few years after his birth, and his mother took the children to England, where George was educated at Eton College. Thereafter he spent some time in the Army. A highly eccentric character, he is said to have become so after a blow to the head sometime in his 20s. He was for a time a popular figure in Paris and London, but his passion for gambling and his repeated refusal to pay his gambling debts, destroyed his reputation. On one celebrated occasion the future King Charles X of France had him thrown out of a gambling den in Paris; he had no redress since as a commoner he could not challenge Charles to a duel. Despite his quarrelsome nature he also had a reputation for charm and courtesy.